Post-doctoral position (18 months)
Title: Cancer, Environment and Metabolomic: Dog as Sentinel Species
Research Unit:
Laboratoire d’Étude des Résidus et Contaminants dans les Aliments (LABERCA), http://www.laberca.org
Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire, Agroalimentaire et de l’Alimentation Nantes Atlantique (Oniris)
Scientific guidance team:
Dr. Jean-Philippe ANTIGNAC – [email protected]
Dr. Frédérique COURANT – [email protected]
Context and objectives
LABERCA, the Laboratoire d’Etude des Résidus et Contaminants dans les Aliments, is a research unit of the
Nantes Atlantique College of Veterinary Medicine, Food Science and Engineering (Oniris). The general field
of activity of LABERCA fits within a global and integrated approach of risk assessment, from agricultural
supply to human and its mankind. LABERCA generates knowledge and data related to the sources,
transport and metabolism of chemical substances, in order to simultaneously characterise both exposure of
consumers to chemical pollutants (occurrence of these parameters in foodstuffs) and their internal dose
(occurrence of the same parameters, their metabolites or their degradation products in biological fluids
and human tissue).
Besides conventional and historical targeted approaches based on liquid/gas chromatography – mass
spectrometry developed by the unit to monitor and quantify these compounds, LABERCA has become
involved in developing and exploiting new methodological approaches that are more open-ended, notably
metabolic or metabolomic-type profiling. Overall, the unit aim at characterising the biological changes that
occur following exposure to a chemical (particularly when this relates to endocrine disruption) or revealing
new biomarkers of exposure and/or effects associated with these pollutants (with the ultimate aim of
diagnosis, if possible predictively). A general framework has been built to conduct such studies, taking into
account the procedures for the preparation of samples (biological fluids, animal tissues, food products), the
generation of metabolic profiles (LC-HRMS GC-MS, GCxGC-MS), processing of raw data and statistical
analysis by multivariate techniques (PCA and OPLS).
This post-doctoral contract falls within this context and is part of the project Canem ("Cancer, Environment
and Metabolomics, Dog as sentinel species"), regional project funded by the Pays de la Loire region, and
conducted in collaboration with AMAROC Unit ("Cancer animaux: modèles pour la recherche en oncologie
comparée") of Oniris (Coordinator). Indeed, cancer is now in France the leading cause of death among both
humans and pets. Dogs generally sharing the same environment as its owners, the hypothesis made in this
project is that the question of the influence of environmental factors (particularly chemical exposure) on
the incidence of cancer could be studied in the dog as a model of the same potential link in humans. This
project therefore aims to use the spontaneous cancer of the dog as a model: i) to monitor a targeted set of
chemical contaminants in biological samples (including fat) in order to characterize the body burden the
studied individuals, and ii) to characterize the biological signatures (serum metabolic profiles) associated
with tumor development.
During the post-doctoral contract, the recruited person will support the second part (metabolomics) of the
project, including analysis of blood samples collected from healthy dogs or dogs with spontaneous cancer.
Two types of canine cancers will be studied: breast tumors and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, due to their
clinicopathological characteristics very similar to their human equivalents and their suspected links with
environmental contaminants. The final purpose will be to highlight blood biomarkers correlated with an
imprint of environmental and physiological disturbances associated with cancer development.
Candidate profile:
PhD in analytical chemistry and/or chemistry with a good knowledge in mass spectrometry. Experience in
metabolomics (data processing, data analysis) will be greatly appreciated. This position is open for an 18
month period (from March 2012). Salary: 2000€ / month